End of Camp with Surprise Win!

Local Runners at Home in Gasparilla 8K

BY BILL WARD and FRED STEIER

Published: February 28, 2011

TAMPA - When Brianne Gaal returned recently to her alma mater, St. Petersburg's Northside Christian, to be inducted into the school's Hall of Fame, something a little disturbing dawned on her.

She realized that some of the students there may not have been alive when, under her maiden name of Brianne Harrington, she was winning nine state titles in cross country and track between 1994 and 1997.

"Some of the students were calling me 'Ma'am' or 'Ms. Harrington,'" said Gaal, 31 and living in Cary, N.C., with her ex-pro triathlete husband, Marty. "That's a little weird. It made me feel so much older than them, even though I still feel like a little kid inside."

To see her win Gasparilla's 8k race Sunday, Gaal still looks and runs a lot like that skinny but incredibly gifted Northside kid from the 1990s. Thing is, Gaal had no plans on being the first woman across the finish in the race's first year. Her winning time for the approximately five-mile distance was 32 minutes, 34 seconds - just over 6:33 per mile.

Taking second was 37-year-old Rae Ann Darling Reed (33:26) of Bradenton and third was St. Petersburg's Christina Noordstar (33:57).

A veteran of several of Gasparilla's 5k races and a former standout for the University of Central Florida, Gaal said she entered Sunday's 8k as a finale to a triathlon training camp she was staging with some of the athletes she coaches with Marty, who took part in Sunday's half marathon.

Next thing she knew, Gaal saw Noordstar, who is also an accomplished runner/triathlete, and caught up with her. Then Gaal passed her and found herself breaking the tape at the finish line.

"I'm really surprised I won," said Gaal, who works as a financial analyst. "I'm surprised that I felt that good after a ton of runs, bikes and swimming in the ocean."

The men's 8k winner also was surprised with his victory. For Joshua Prevatt, however, it was his fourth race of the weekend as he was completing the circuit for the Michelob Ultra Challenge involving all four of the Gasparilla events.

Prevatt already had run the 15k and the 5k on Saturday and less than two hours before the start of Sunday's 8k, completed the half marathon to earn seventh place overall. The 26-year-old Brandon resident crossed the 8k line in 28:06, well clear of second-place finisher Anthony Calingo of Tampa, who finished 34 seconds back.

When asked what he did between the two races, Prevatt laughed and said, "I warmed up for a couple of miles to stay loose."

He noted he was riding the high he got from the half marathon.

"My half marathon time (1:15:35) was only 45 seconds off of my PR (personal record), so I thought why not go for it. I am running the Fort DeSoto half (marathon) soon and will be going for 1:14. Today's results are encouraging."

As with the women's winner, Prevatt is local, having run for Riverview High. He led his cross country team to the state meet his senior year (2001) and ran at the state track meet the following spring as part of the 4x800-meter relay team.

"But then I took a couple of years off after high school," he said. "I'm just now really getting into (distance running and racing)."

Pretty Please?

Oh hai, spring! Iz you here to stay?

Happy February 9th

Time is flying, have I not updated in awhile again?

We hosted our Master’s team party this past Saturday night. We weren’t supposed to, but the original host was out with the flu. Marty yelled from upstairs on Friday night, “Bri, we’re having the master’s party here!” Typical freakout ensued with shouts back to him, “NO! We can’t have the party! The house is a mess! It’s too small! I’m not ready for this! Too much to do!” Saturday went like this: work, craptastic run, cleancleancleanclean, Party! Which of course was very fun.

Sunday found us at Kari’s superbowl party cheering for the Steelers. I’ve never been a Steelers fan but I am a Kari fan and want to keep our friendship (and my life) so I am now! We actually stayed up for the entire game this year, not sure when that’s happened recently.

Sources beyond my control have been keeping me from getting a bike ride in. I had planned on riding the trainer last night, but our pump broke and caused my tire to go flat. I ran out to get a new pump but by the time that was all done it was getting late and I still hadn’t eaten dinner. New plan: ride trainer in the morning. So I got up at the butt crack of dawn only to find the bolt that tightens the trainer spinny thingy (technical term) to the tire was completely stripped. Luckily, Kurt Kinetic has some awesome customer service and one little email has granted me a replacement bolt that’s been dropped in the mail. Doesn’t fix my riding problem for the week but I’ll get outside this weekend and cut my losses.

Here's a picture to make this post more interesting. The Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus train was stopped behind our house for at least a half hour the other day. Hope a clown didn't escape.

Fun Weekend and Other Stuff

This past weekend I did some of this:

And some of this:

We had some crazy warm weather all of the sudden - skiing was fine and luckily they had a lot of snow but the next day it was 60 degrees! In the mountains! Then yesterday it got up to almost 70 and it was awesome running in shorts and a t-shirt. It's not to last as today it got cold again. Boo.

BUT in just a few weeks we'll be down in Florida for our annual training camp! Can't wait for that.

Did you guys here the Thorpedo is going to stage a comeback? Here's a not so great article about him which also details other athletes who have retired and tried to comeback only to fail spectacularly. Let's hope he prove's them wrong. I like the guy. Ian Thorpe to try for London 2012.

And here's a nicer article about his comeback. Thorpedo is in the pool again.

We're Going Skiing!

Okay, sort of. Tomorrow evening Marty and I are driving to Maggie Valley, NC (just west of Asheville) to stay at my dad’s cabin. There is a ski area just down the road that we’re going to check out on Saturday. 4 of our friends are joining us on Friday evening and it should be a fun weekend. They’ve actually gotten quite a bit of snow (see previous post about our NC winter – now I’m happy about it) out in the mountains of NC and they make a bunch of it, too, so it should actually be pretty good for some low key skiing. This place has 16 runs and 5 ski lifts. This ain’t Colorado! Here’s a picture of their trail map to give you an idea of how small it is.


They have a tubing area which should be fun, too.

It’ll be nice to get away for the weekend on a mini vacation that’s relatively cheap (thanks, dad!)

Weather

I want to have a rambling, whiney, slightly incoherent blog about the weather. Here goes.


Yup, it’s cold. It may be colder where you are, but where I am it’s cold enough for me. Too cold if I’m being honest. Each year we’ve been here in NC it seems the winter has gotten a bit colder. Hopefully, this trend isn’t going continue. I really hate when the weather person says with a wry smile, “Normal high for us is 50 degrees, but today we’ll top out at 38!” (or 42 or something below 50 degrees causing me to snarl and give the tv the finger). In fact, we haven’t had many days this year that have hit 50 degrees. So the tv has seen lots of the finger. Poor tv.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it here. It would take a lot to get the two of us back to Florida (and when I say a lot, I mean pretty much never ever going to happen). And I realize that this is the nicest time to be in Florida: Jan – Mar. The other months aren’t worth it. Believe me, I know. I've done far too many hard run workouts at 4pm in August to even remotely believe that I won't have premature aging and/or skin cancer. But I still reserve the right to complain about the weather because this is my blog and what good are they if you can’t rant and rave once in awhile. So while I know that there were some tough souls that rode outside this weekend I was not one of them. My cut off is 40 degrees and the feels like temp was not really close to that. Now I realize that maybe some of you reading this are far up north and don’t really ever get to ride outside during these months, but here in the south we ARE used to riding almost all year long. Bundle up and your good to go. Not this year.

Running is a different story all together. I may grumble a bit as I start off but really you can get away with running when it’s cold and not have any issues. It’s really quite enjoyable to the heat.

And as Marty would say: That is all.

This and That

Due to the fact that I didn’t get my run in yesterday, I did it on the treadmill this morning at my work gym. It probably would’ve been better to do this yesterday but hindsight is 20-20; I was very tired yesterday after having not slept well the previous night and had some coaching work that needed to be done. After getting it done it was late and all I wanted to do was curl up with my latest teen fiction novel - The Mortal Instrument’s series for those interested (in teasing me). Anywho, I got up early to get to work and get that run in.

The thing is, I was supposed to do 6x400 in the midst of the run – not fast, but like a tempo/fast pace. This is sort of difficult on the treadmill, not to mention I always feel a bit self conscious doing workouts like this on the treadmill at work because I look crazy next to the lady who is walking slow up a slight incline. There are a lot of employee’s and I didn’t actually see anyone I knew (except for 1 person) but you do ‘see’ people around and I don’t want to be ‘that girl on the treadmill.’

Well, whatever. I got the workout done.

Then I get into the lockerroom to shower and change and realized I forgot my brush at home. Doh! So I just washed and dried my hair using my fingers to detangle --- and it looks better than normal. Go figure.

On the racing front, only sprints for the first half of the year. We aren’t doing St. Anthony’s this year (we’re trying to keep race travel to a minimum). This takes so much pressure off knowing I don’t have to be in awesome shape by the end of April. My first race will be sometime in April, but since it will be a sprint I’m not freaking out reading other people’s blogs who are really ramping up their training. I’m might do an Olympic distance at some point and then I’m toying with the idea of doing a late season half, but we’ll see how the summer goes.